In this episode of the Near Future Laboratory Podcast, I talk with my old friend Ian Bogost about his new book, “The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life” — a funny (like..I laughed out loud) , generous, and quietly radical invitation to recover the sensory enchantment of everyday life.Ian’s book begins with ordinary things: stick shifts, toasters, paper cups, plastic film, doorknobs, faucets, pre-ordering shirts, Diet Coke cans, plunger force cups when they are missing their handle, the texture of a phone case, the sound of ice in a motel ice bucket. Of course our conversation quickly opens into something larger, which I think Ian has been asking for awhile: how modern life has dematerialized so many of our encounters with the world, replacing small tactile gratifications with convenience, automation, frictionless interfaces, and screens.What I especially loved about this conversation is that Ian is not making a nostalgic argument for going backward. He is not saying we need to abandon technology or recreate some lost analog past. Instead, he is asking us to accept what the world is already offering everyday: these small, recurring, very much embodied encounters that make up the actual texture of a life. This isn't “mindfulness” as another productivity technique. Nor is it a kind of self-improvement as a grind. Ian is wondering about the possibility that contentment might be right in front of is, even as we appear to be just pulling the pull-tab on a can of suds; it's under our fingertips, in our peripheral vision, in the overlooked background of the day.We talk about the origins of the book, Ian’s long path from games and object-oriented philosophy to ordinary experience, the decline of sensory life, why curiosity may be a virtue worth defending, how to “bring the background into the foreground,” and why gratification and imagination might belong to the same family of openness.It is a conversation about small stuff, which means it is also a conversation about almost everything.https://smallstuffbook.comhttps://bogost.comhttps://www.theatlantic.com/author/ian-bogost/

The podcast is back from hiatus with a fun one!

Episode 104 is a conversation with Sarah Rothberg and my dear old friend and collaborator Marina Zurkow about More&More, their speculative card-deck and worldbuilding framework for making strange, useful futures with other people.

We talk about why constraints are better than blank canvases, how a handful of absurd cards can quickly open up a whole social world, and why the point is not to invent dystopias but to imagine worlds you might actually want to live in.

Along the way: the Whitney Museum, Hudson River speculation, public kitchens and bathrooms, communication by scent, abolitionist futures, AI ethics, material responsibility, and the impossibility of being perfectly virtuous while living inside messy technologies.

It’s rangy, playful, and serious in the way good speculative work tends to be.

Love these guys.

Andy Polaine is a designer, educator, writer and podcast guy. He hosts the wonderful 'Power of Ten' podcast. Andy is known for his work as a service designer, innovation consultant and professional executive coach.

Don't forget — please support the podcast and all the things over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. Your support would be very much appreciated.

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Thank you!

Julian